Base price: $7.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: 30 – 45 minutes.
BGG Link
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt was provided by Pandasaurus Games.
You know, whenever a game comes out and it’s a wild critical and commercial darling, it’s pretty much only a matter of time until an expansion follows. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that beyond the intersection of art and commercialism, but this isn’t a place where I bemoan the inability to consume ethically under capitalism. I’m more here to look at what the expansion adds and changes. You’ve seen it with a number of games (such as Cascadia: Landmarks, which I’m excited to get to soon). Sea Salt & Paper has become one of my primary tiny card games, so I want to see how the extra salt fits in. Let’s check it out!
In Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt, the cards are back with all new effects! The Sea Star lets you turn any duo into a 3-point play (minus its ability), the Lobster lets you draw five cards and choose one, the Jellyfish forces your opponent to only take the top card of the deck on their turn, the Seahorse counts towards any one collection you have, and the crab party, well, every other card got a party card. For an eight-card expansion, there are a lot of ways this can shake things up! How will you use these new effects, and will you still be able to obtain all four mermaids?
Overall: 8.5 / 10
Overall, I like Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt a lot! That said, I do have to get two things off of my chest and out of my mind before I can shower it with any more praise. The booster pack the cards come in is terrible. It’s just … it’s not a good way to store those cards at all. I suppose it’s supposed to be able to hang on a shelf end-cap or something; I don’t understand retail at all. But from a photography standpoint, it was a huge pain. Now, the nice thing is, you could theoretically just discard the booster pack altogether … if the extra cards fit in the standard box. They do not. It’s infuriating. I’m going to have to use a rubber band or something. If you get rid of the rules for both I think it works, but, I mean, why seems like a reasonable question given this. Thankfully, these are largely gripes with Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt: The Product, not the game itself. The closest thing you’ll hear to a complaint for me is that shuffling a small number of cards into a larger deck dilutes it and means that you may not always see the extra effects, which can be kind of a bummer. Thankfully, I think there are just enough cards that I usually see one per round, at least.
Gameplay-wise, I actually really like what the cards add to the game! They feel informed by play, which is nice. The Crab party, for instance, is a great reflection of how my friends and I almost never take Crab cards when we play. They’re not bad; they’re just much more situationally appropriate if there are more cards in the discard. The Seahorse is great because at higher player counts you may never see that Shell or Octopus that you need (or the Penguin, really). I really like the Jellyfish as a less-aggressive alternative to the Shark + Swimmer combo. A few people I play with bristle at the idea of stealing cards, so limiting your opponent to a less-useful turn feels gentler than taking something and breaking up their combo. It’s overall nice. The Lobster is dangerous, but that’s because getting to draw 5 cards and keep 1 is almost always super useful. Thankfully, again, there aren’t that many cards in this booster pack, so you won’t see the “balance” of the game tilting towards these. They just give you more to do and more ways to do it, which has been a lot of fun as I’ve been playing through a few rounds of this.
I’ve been a huge fan of Sea Salt & Paper since I first tried it at Gen Con, so it’s been nice to be able to revisit this game with a bit of new context. There’s always a temptation to add a ton of new content or an entirely new game mode or, I don’t know, a cooperative variant? I have no idea what crowdfunding is up to lately. A small, targeted expansion can often inject a bit of new life in and create some new strategies, and for a game based entirely around card draw and synergy, it’s interesting to see how those changes emerge. Plus, the game looks great, so seeing more fancy origami is a lot of fun. I’ve quite enjoyed Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt, and if you’re looking for a great tiny expansion, you’re a fan of the original game, or you want to play a quick and delightful little card game, I’d definitely recommend checking it out!
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